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Sketches
& Gestures
Artists'
Actions and Exhibition opened: Thursday, January 31,
2002. Durational performances throughout the evening
by Gul Cagin, Alvin Gregorio, Lauren Hartman, and Curt
LeMieux in the Weingart Galleries.
Sketches
& Gestures was an evening of performances and an
exhibition of works by six Southern California based
artists exploring both live and visual art featuring
Gul Cagin, Mark Greenfield, Alvin Gregorio, Lauren Hartman,
Steve Irvin, and Curt LeMieux.
Through image and actions these artists seeked
the immediate meaning of their human experiences and
the indisolvability of the body from one's culture,
gender, sexuality and physicality.
The
exhibition will run until February 22, 2002 at the Weingart
and Mullin Galleries, Occidental College, 1600 Campus
Road in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, CA
90041.
Gallery
Hours are Mon. - Fri., 10 - 4:30 and by appointment.
For directions to
Occidental College Galleries visit: http://www.oxy.edu/oxy/welcome/directions/,
call (323)-259-2749, or e-mail kskraba@oxy.edu.
Lauren
Hartman I
am no one. Public action on Federal St., Los Angeles,
1999
Turkish
artist Gul Cagin explores live performance, video installations,
and hybrid objects resulting in unfamiliar experiences
investigating the relationship between the body and
objects in domestic spaces. In her timely sculptural-video installation reConstructinG,
Cagin will pose the dilemma of the desire to heal through
physical gestures and the desire to kill
or de-construct by using materials and objects as surrogates
for the human body.
Mark
Greenfield investigates images of people in blackface
extracted from late nineteenth and twentieth century
photographs of vaudeville and minstrel show performers,
as both a source of disturbance and fascination. Greenfield notes these "manifestations exist to this day
in everything from black stand-up comedy" to the
"crews" and "posses of hip-hop"
and
that "generations of African Americans have suffered
grievous injury at the hands of people whose livelihood
was derived from creating and reinforcing stereotypes
through blackface minstrelsy". In Greenfield's installation Hit Man, a giant piñata
of a head made up in blackface and baseball bat with
the word "worth" painted on its surface leaves
the space rich for his 8:00 performance in Mullin Gallery. Greenfield has an extensive career as an artist including exhibitions
at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Cal Poly Pomona, LA
Art Core, Armory Center, Luckman Fine Arts Center, and
the Angeles Gate Cultural Center and is currently acting
as the Director of Watts Towers Arts Center.
A
recent recipient of a Fulbright Award to the Philippines,
Alvin Gregorio utilizes symbols of his tag-lish (Tagalog
+ English) language and culture spoken by his ancestors
and future selves - materializing in his layered paintings,
drawings and performances.
The work he will be performing at Occidental
College, The Distance from here to there, will involve
burying himself in earth inside the gallery and proceeding
through a walking meditation throughout the evening.
Gregorio has exhibited his work nationally at Sotheby's,
Brewery
Projects, Patricia Correia Gallery, and Los Angeles
Municipal Gallery and in the Drawing Room Gallery in
Manila, Philippines.
Curt LeMieux
drawing, mixed media 2001
Steve
Irvin, known for his primal and often physically intense
durational actions, will be exhibiting two series of
photographs from recent performances.
In a grouping of images from his exhibition entitled
Sanctuary Skin, Irvin is clothed in a towel and layer
of baby powder forming a mask on his face. His infinitesimal gestures, momentary
paralysis, tension, and release, (all explorations of
the media of muscle and tendon, flesh and bone), took
place in a claw-foot bath-tub of water, and hint at
the privacy, delicacy, and complexity of the body as
site of spirit, mind, emotions, and physicality.
Irvin has exhibited through out Southern California,
including such venues as Highways and Watts Towers
Arts
Center and has curated performance events at Track 16
Gallery.
Lauren
Hartman inventor of Crazy Space and risk-taking transformational
art events like Fairy an interactive performance at
Side Street Live, often weaves elements of theatre,
costume, sound, music scores, and text into tableaus
of characters that screech, writhe, and weep - often
sensed as psychologically confrontational and mesmerizing
towards unsuspecting
art audiences. She joins forces with installation and performance artist Curt
LeMieux for a collaborative movement piece called "Tee-hee"
investigating the formal and
synthetic aspects of physical and facial gestures and
naïve theatre.
LeMieux's drawn installations of wire and tape,
rendered performances, and drawings of stylized linear
and vacant human forms - move, pull, stretch, and breathe
in non-gravity fields of pale color - often suggesting
dream-like scenarios.
LeMieux has exhibited nationally including such
venues as Spruce Street Forum, Huntington Beach Art
Center, Gallery 825, and Duluth Art Institute.
MEDIA
CONTACT: Kat
Skraba (323)-259-2749
or kskraba@oxy.edu
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